A Republican candidate who is defying the odds in a deep blue state is the “most surprising event” of the 2022 elections, according to a top pollster.
“I never would have expected to be saying we might have a Republican governor in Oregon,” Scott Rasmussen said Friday on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show, according to Just the News.
Republican Christine Drazan is running against Democrat Tina Kotek, with fellow Democrat Betsy Johnson running a strong race as an independent. Democratic Gov. Kate Brown is term-limited from seeking another term.
Democrats in Oregon outnumber Republicans by about 282,000, roughly 9.5 percentage points, according to Willamette Week.
“You’ve got a wealthy, independent, former Democrat,” Rasmussen said to Just the News. “You’ve got a really unpopular Democratic governor who’s leaving. You’ve got all the craziness in Portland. So right now, there’s a chance that a Republican could sneak into the governor’s office. That will be wild.”
Although President Joe Biden has shown up to support Kotek, Rasmussen said that’s not much help.
“The President’s numbers overall are toxic,” he said. “Democrats don’t want to campaign with him. And I suspect after the election, he’ll have some trouble getting calls returned.”
According to the website five thirty-eight, Drazan has come out on top in six of eight recent polls, although her margin is often razor-thin. According to its summary of polls, Drazan would get 38.7 percent of the vote, Kotek 38.2 percent and Johnson 14 percent.
“For Drazan, it looks positive on every front,” Tim Nashif, CEO of Gateway Communications and the Hoffman Research Group, said after a recent poll found Drazan with a two-point lead, well within the margin of error of 3.8 percentage points, according to Willamette Week.
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In an Op-Ed in USA Today, Ingrid Jacques addressed the phenomenon of a possible Republican victory in a deep blue state.
“Even die-hard Oregon liberals have gotten fed up with spiking crime, rampant homelessness and increased drug use,” she wrote, noting that voters are appalled by “[t]he fact that in Oregon it’s more legally acceptable to use heroin or cocaine than it is to get a plastic bag at the grocery store.”
“Drazan has made tackling crime and homelessness key to her campaign — issues that polls show are top of mind for Oregonians. Decades of liberal leadership have not addressed these problems. In fact, they’ve only gotten worse,” she wrote.
Kotek has been counting on star power, with Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts making an appearance a week after Biden made a campaign stop for her.
“I didn’t come here because I believe this is a safe seat. I came here because Oregon is dangerously close to flipping red, and we have 17 election days to keep that from happening,” Warren said Saturday, according to KGW-TV.
Oregon is not the only state where polls are offering a surprise.
A Trafalgar poll on Michigan’s election showed Republican candidate Tudor Dixon running neck-and-neck with Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
The poll of 1,079 people showed Whitmer leading 48.4 percent to 47.9 percent, well within the poll’s margin of error of 2.9 percent.
The site Real Clear Politics, which in August had Whitmer up by 17 points in its average polls, said that gap is now 3.2 percentage points.
